How To Watch The Milan Cortina Winter Olympic Games; Opening Ceremony Is Friday

The 2026 Milan Cortina Olympic Games officially open Friday with a ceremony at Milan’s San Siro stadium. The games run through Feb. 22.

The opening ceremony is typically the most-viewed event of the game on official broadcasts, and is watched by millions of people worldwide. U.S. pop singer Mariah Carey and crossover tenor Andrea Bocelli are among the performers. The opening ceremony begins at 8 p.m. local time (2 p.m. Eastern).

The ceremony will be re-aired in a primetime broadcast at 8 p.m. Eastern on NBC.

Some 2,900 Olympic athletes from 93 countries are competing for 116 gold medals across 16 sports.

Preliminary heats began on Wednesday. Check here for a daily schedule.

Dozens of countries will stream or air each day's events, with some of them delaying broadcasts until prime time depending on the time zone. NBC, which has exclusive U.S. broadcasting rights for live coverage, will delay coverage until prime time in the United States, where Eastern Time is six hours behind Milan and Cortina. It will stream live competition on Peacock.

Peacock doesn’t offer a free trial, but a couple of other streaming services do: DirecTV, whose plans start with a five-day free trial and whose channel lineup includes all of those providing service (NBC, USA Network, CNBC, NBCSN); and Hulu + Live TV, whose plans start with a three-day trial.

This will be the most spread-out Winter Games in history: The two primary competition sites are the city of Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo, the winter resort in the Dolomites that is more than 250 miles away by road. Athletes also will compete in three other mountain clusters besides Cortina, while the closing ceremony will be in Verona, 100 miles east of Milan.

Other key dates to watch are:

• Feb. 7: First gold medal events.
• Feb. 8: Gold medal, women’s Alpine skiing downhill.
• Feb. 13: Gold medal, men’s figure skating.
• Feb. 18: Gold medal, women’s Alpine skiing slalom.
• Feb. 19: Gold medal, women’s figure skating. Gold medal game, women’s ice hockey. First gold medals in ski mountaineering, a new Olympic sport.
• Feb. 22: Gold medal game, men’s ice hockey. Closing ceremony.

Two of the most decorated Alpine skiers in history, 41-year-old Lindsey Vonn and Mikaela Shiffrin, opened the World Cup season in dominant form. Vonn still plans to compete despite rupturing her ACL last week.

Eileen Gu is back in freestyle skiing, as is Chloe Kim in snowboarding. NHL players are back on Olympic ice for the first time since 2014, so watch for the likes of Sidney Crosby and Connor McDavid.

Ski mountaineering will make its Olympic debut, while skeleton has added a mixed team event, luge has added women’s doubles, and large hill ski jumping added women’s and men’s super team events.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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